Conservatives Are NOT Reliable Allies

Oblivious of, or disregarding, evidence about the base motives behind the law Lochner overturned, Roberts repeated the myth that Lochner “convert[ed] personal preferences into constitutional mandates.” Roberts expressed an aversion to what he oddly calls “implied fundamental rights.” And he denounced the “freewheeling notion of individual autonomy” affirmed by Lochner’s recognition of “the general right of an individual to be free in his person and in his power to contract in relation to his own labor.” Roberts praised as “judicial self-restraint” the Lochner dissenters’ refusal to recognize that right.